


Smoke (Pt. 2)

by Serai



Series: High Contrast [12]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Amusement, Anticipation, Cigarette smoke, Hands, M/M, Photography, Pre-Slash, Pursuit, Turnabout is Fair Play, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4552188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serai/pseuds/Serai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zeke thinks about Casey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke (Pt. 2)

.  
The cigarette’s smoke spirals in the moonlight, bobbing and weaving, curling in on itself and spreading out. Vaporous spiderwebs trap forms and limbs and wings. Smiles. Eyes. A sense of…something surrounding…

 _Goddammit._ Zeke shakes himself out of his half-trance. Is this shit going to happen every time he has a cigarette now? He’s never thought about this kind of thing before; art just isn’t his thing. Smoke’s always just been smoke. It’s cool, but it’s smoke. Now who the fuck knows what it is, but he can thank Casey for this one.

 _Casey Connor,_ Zeke thinks. _Well, fuck me._ He prides himself on never being surprised, but hell if little Casey hasn’t managed it. He didn’t see this coming at all. A sucker punch from those nimble hands. Zeke shifts position on the windowseat to ease the pressure, and looks down from his bedroom on the quiet street, still relishing the dawning delight he felt as he stole Casey’s secret.

 

He’d been checking the photo lab schedule signup for a week now, noting the movements of various initials and how they intersected, and found CC appeared mostly after 2:30, sometimes after school. _Hm_. Casey likes to work without distraction. Or maybe without limitations, without having to worry about who might see what he’s doing. The perfect opportunity came up, and Zeke headed down there, not knowing exactly what he was going to do, but expecting to enjoy it, no matter what happened.

What happened was Casey Connor turned out not to be who Zeke thought he was at all. Casey’s actually sly. Casey’s _hungry_ , and he takes what he can if he thinks he can get away with it. 

At first the idea seemed like a bust. The lab was deserted, and Zeke was just turning to leave when he caught sight of the red warning light just over the black curtained entrance to the darkroom. He smiled a hungry smile and thought of Casey in the red gloom, bent over the sharp-smelling trays, the nape of his neck exposed. He’d love to see that sight, but he wasn’t going to step foot in the darkroom. He knows it’s sacred to Casey, a place to feel safe, and he won’t violate that. So he decided to hang for a few minutes and see what happened. Taking out a pack, he lit up and looked around. 

The first thing that caught his eye was some photos clipped with clothespins to a pair of long white lines strung over the tables next to the darkroom entrance. What were they? He couldn’t tell – were they even photographs? He stepped closer. What…oh. It was smoke, cigarette smoke. Zeke raised his eyebrows. Why would someone photograph this? It seemed oddly pointless, and yet, as he went from one to another he began to feel the effect, and smiled. The smoke seemed alive, whirling and twisting and constantly dancing. How was Casey doing that? Because Zeke’s seen thousands of cigarettes burning, and hasn’t ever seen this rising above any of them. 

He moved on, the photos continuing around the corner of the L-shaped table, along the adjacent wall. The pictures were pulling out, racking focus, and now he saw the dark brick wall behind the pale grey tendrils. The outside wall of the cafeteria building, he was certain. The pictures panned out, now tall columns instead of spreading plumes, and the focus moved outward and down towards the cigarette itself…

…and his own hand. 

 

Leaning on the frame of his bedroom window, Zeke wishes for a breeze to cool his head. The shock of that moment, the delight of it, is still echoing through him. How fucking delicious it was to realize he’s been in Casey’s sights just as Casey has been in his. _How long has he been watching me?_ Zeke wonders. He runs his hand down under the waistband of his sweat pants. The thought of Casey alone in the darkroom, looking at him, glowing red-tinged in the semi-darkness. _Fuck_.

 

It was Zeke's hand in the picture, alright. There was the ring he always wore on his middle finger, and the shirt whose cuffs were pooled around his wrist was his current favorite. He was leaning on that hand, and in the next picture, his arm was visible. The next was a vertical one, and this one presented him from just above his jaw down to his thighs – he was seated along the outer wall of the cafeteria, as he’d thought – his body creating a kind of half-moon frame for the smoke still rising from his hand. In the last few he was completely visible, and here it became too glaringly obvious not to see.

Half-sitting, half-leaning against the wall, his hands on a brick ledge, each of the pictures captured him either smirking or downright laughing at something going on off to the right. _So_. Zeke looked back at the red light, imagined the slight form that didn’t seem so quailing anymore. _He likes to see me laughing._ The thought made him confusingly, achingly horny. Is this what it felt like to be pursued?

Casey’s eye wasn’t innocent, either, no matter what he might protest. Zeke knows better, because he remembers the day recorded there. He’d been laughing at Randi and Tim having one of their epic hissing, slapping bitchlover fights again. He fucking _loved_ those two; they made his day. And this particular day was bright and hot, with a sunny, brassy light. One of those _get out of my face_ days. But somehow, Casey had changed the very essence of it, and turned that brassy glare into a sensual, almost autumnal light, that turned the curls of smoke into living shapes, and living shapes into marble sculpture. He looked at himself, at what Casey sees, at what Casey _wants_ to see. He saw himself worshipped, and felt the danger of the pedestal that was really a leg trap in disguise. Startling back, he jittered, taking a last, deep drag on his cigarette and exhaling his fright. Then he bolted out of there.

 

Zeke moves again on the windowseat, imagining Casey imagining him. His eyes narrow as the smoke curls up from his hand, and he groans. He’s going to have this boy - _oh yes he is_ \- and his skin tightens at the thought. What makes him come is the realization that he’s going to be had in return, by _Casey fucking Connor_.

He can hardly _wait_.

.


End file.
